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Day 11 - May 8, Kotor, Montenegro: A Quantum of Montenegro is Not Enough

published

May 9, 2013

Guest Bloggers Adam McCulloch and Emma Sloley are married travel writers based in New York. Originally from Australia, they moved to the U.S. in 2004. They have traveled to over 60 countries and written for a wide range of publications, including Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, New York magazine, Gotham, Gourmet Traveller, Coastal Living, Reader’s Digest and Outside. Adam and Emma are sending us stories and pictures daily from their 14-day voyage aboard Seabourn Odyssey between Rome and Venice. Come by and read their blogs often.

We always hated Roger Moore as James Bond. Not with the burning passion of Dr. No, mind you, who wanted him strapped to an imploding nuclear reactor. Ours has always been more of a mild outrage that this bland dandy could ever have played Ian Fleming’s international man of mystery. We mention this because we’re no longer in the Ionian Sea. In fact, we’re no longer in Europe. We have arrived in “Bondlandia.” Gliding through the satin waters of Montenegro this morning, we were struck by how many ports on our voyage were destinations in which 007 had either wooed or wasted people. The very first Bond book, Casino Royale, is partly set in Montenegro. For Your Eyes Only was filmed in Corfu, and Venice, our final port, seems to be a perennial set-piece. And for good reason. As we cruised up the Bay of Kotor, there were island churches and mountain lairs perfect for Bond villains to hide out. The towering, craggy cliffs seemed ideal for falling to one’s death or parasailing to safety with the aid of a cleverly designed memory-fabric courtesy of Q. And those terracotta rooftops looked as though they’d provide a splendidly destructive surface on which to conduct a chase scene on motorcycle or foot. To us, Roger Moore seemed suited to exactly none of these activities. He would have been more at home doing what we did this afternoon, talking a leisurely kayak along the mirrored bay before repairing to bed for an afternoon nap. What both we and Roger Moore lacked (and what today’s Daniel Craig has in abundance) was the air of barely repressed violence, a “blunt instrument,” as Fleming intended his rather brutish Bond to be. By all means, share your own least favorite Bond in the comments -- and feel free to be blunt.